Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has continued to act in big-budget productions even after her wedding, unlike other Bollywood heroines.

A report in the Hindustan Times on Wednesday said that director Madhur Bhandarkar, who had cast the newly pregnant Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in the leading role in a movie called “Heroine,” appeared to be rather depressed about the announcement.

“Madhur has just locked himself up in the room and refuses to talk,” unnamed sources told the newspaper, adding that the director was putting the film on hold out of concerns she would look “unglamorous” as shooting progressed.

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India Real Time couldn’t reach Mr. Bhandarkar or Mrs. Rai Bachchan, who is expecting her first child with husband Abhishek Bachchan, also a Bollywood star, to confirm this version of events. The movie distributor backing the film said on Wednesday that the decision to halt production was “mutual.”

“We have all mutually agreed that the best step would be to avoid shooting further rather than proceeding with an incredibly demanding schedule over the coming months,” UTV Motion Pictures, the producers of the movie, said in a statement.

They added that they would “miss this opportunity to work with Aishwarya” but wished her the very best “as she and Abhishek move into this special new phase in their lives.”

The statement did not say whether the film production would resume with her later, raising questions about what Mrs. Rai Bachchan’s career path will look like after motherhood. Should she expect to segue into promoting refrigerators and snack foods on TV as has been the fate of other well-known Bollywood actresses who settled down?

Traditionally, marriage has marked the end of many a Bollywood actress’s career—at least as a lead star. But the 37-year-old former Miss World has continued to act in big-budget productions after her 2007 wedding, such as last year’s “Raavan.” That’s very different than what happened with actresses in the past. Mother-in-law Jaya Bachchan, for instance, was a very well-known actress until she married Amitabh Bachchan in 1973. She only appeared in two films in the years soon after that, although in the past decade she has appeared in motherly roles.

“Twenty-five years ago, the shelf life of heroines was limited to eight to 10 years,” said Ziya Us Salam, a senior assistant editor at the lifestyle supplement of The Hindu daily. He said that the cut-off could be marriage—or age. “In those days, even at the age of 30 she was relegated to the roles of bhabhis [sisters-in-law] and mothers.”

In some cases, actresses ended up playing the mothers of actors against whom they used to be cast as the romantic lead, said a piece on an Indian entertainment Web site that suggested that marriage interfered too heavily with the make-believe world of the cinema-goer, who at one time would have been mostly male.

Even as recently as the 1990s, stars underwent semi-retirement after marriage. Kajol, who appeared in the top-grossing Hindi movie, the 1995 production “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge” (The Braveheart Will Get the Bride), and is a year younger than Mrs. Rai Bachchan, wed fellow actor Ajay Devgn in 1999. After that her lead roles dropped off and she began appearing in films mostly as a “special appearance.”

But this may be changing now. As the stories in Bollywood films become more varied—expanding beyond “pretty young single thing” and “mother” —there may be more roles for women who don’t perfectly fit either of those slots, but who want to continue acting.

Tabloids that obsessively cover Bollywood stars and their relationships, clothes, diets and state of their abdominal muscles, may have also unwittingly helped pierce the veil of fantasy. The Hindu’s Mr. Salam thinks normal life transitions like marriage and children are less of a big deal for the movie-watcher these days.

“This is part of the biological necessity of life,” said Mr. Salam. “Things are changing now…there is no reason why Aishwarya won’t be accepted by the audience after a few years.”

That may explain why Mrs. Rai Bachchan is continuing to act, or why Kajol is starting to reappear in movies like “My Name is Khan,” (2010) where she played an autistic Shah Rukh Khan’s wife, not his mother.

But it is not yet clear that Indian heroines can really make a successful comeback. Actress Madhuri Dixit was hugely popular, particularly for her dancing, through the 1980s and 1990s. After she got married in 1999, the only major film she was in was “Devdas,” as one of the two love interests of the lead star, a role that required a good dancer.

After a hiatus, she played the lead role in the 2007 film “Aaja Nachle,” a vehicle built around her and dancing abilities. But the film didn’t do well.

Of course, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has something going for her that few others do. When she first appeared in the Hindi movie “Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya” (Love Happened) in 1997, she wasn’t from a Bollywood dynasty and didn’t always get selected for plum roles in spite of her good looks (not everyone is a fan of her performances). But as the daughter-in-law of icon Amitabh Bachchan, it could be a whole different ball game for her if she decides she wants to continue acting—if the in-laws are willing, that is.

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